If there is a touchstone phrase that expresses the desire of our nation to be a free and representative democracy it is “We the People,” the first three words of the preamble to the Constitution of the United States.

Yet, nearly 230 years after the Constitution was signed, our struggle to truly understand those words and make them meaningful to all excluded communities continues. Who’s in and who’s out when it comes to “we the people”?

The “perfect union” envisioned by our founding fathers shunned slaves and women of all creeds and colors who were denied the benefits and responsibilities of citizenship. Since then, generations of Americans have fought to expand our notion of inclusion through street protests and civil disobedience, in the courts, state houses, and in Congress.

Still, we find ourselves in a state of flux and reflux in establishing an American experience of fairness and equality for all.

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review a case out of Texas that challenges the fundamental principle of “one person, one vote” and seeks to deny political representation to all but eligible voters. Children and noncitizens would be out.

Many of my neighbors, whose hard work makes Los Angeles function, who pay taxes that support government services, would suddenly become non-entities because of their immigrant status. Like ghosts, they would walk the streets and ride buses invisible to state governance.

The value of equality and representation echoes a core American belief that was articulated by the U.S Supreme Court in its 1962 decision in Baker v. Carr and in 1964 with Reynolds v. Simms. Chief Justice Earl Warren, whose court struck down the discriminatory separate-but-equal doctrine in Brown v. Board of Education, introduced the phrase “one person, one vote,” making it a central principle of our Constitution.

That principle is now in jeopardy.

What is at stake in the Texas case is the very way we divvy up political power in the U.S. For the past half century, the notion of equal representation has compelled us to count all people living in a state and place them in electoral districts of roughly the same size.

But the right-wing legal group behind the Texas challenge wants political districts to be created according to a discriminatory formula; one that stops counting all the people who live in a community and instead counts only citizens eligible to vote.

I represent California’s 24th Senate District, one of the most diverse regions in the country — the immigrant heart of Los Angeles and home to Mexican-Americans, Salvadorians, Guatemalans, Asian and Pacific Islanders, and many more. Within its borders are Koreatown, Little Armenia, Thai Town, and Filipino Town. I fear that tens of thousands of my constituents will wake up one morning in 2016 without political representation. Chefs, nannies, janitors, gardeners, valets, maids, restaurateurs, writers, artists, social workers, lawyers would lose their voice in the Capitol with the stroke of a pen.

When Chief Justice Warren’s Supreme Court affirmed the principle of “one person, one vote,” political districts across the nation were arbitrary and imbalanced. Millions of people weren’t properly represented. In California’s Senate, Los Angeles County’s 6 million people had the equivalent voting power of a rural district with barely 14,000 residents.

Turning back the clock on decades of legal precedent would replace a just and equal system of redistricting with one that’s unjust and unequal. It would disadvantage diverse and urban communities and deprive millions of American residents, many of them Latino or Asian, of the right to an elected official who represents them.

When I walk among the people of the 24th District I cannot tell who is or isn’t a citizen. The question never comes to mind. What does occur to me is that I am a state senator serving nearly one million people of different hues and religions and histories and journeys and myths. Chief Justice Warren was right; each and every one of them counts.

The court should swiftly reject this cynical attack on “one person, one vote.”

Sen. Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles, is president pro tempore of the California Senate and represents the 24th District.